May 26th, 2008

(no subject) @ 10:08 pm

It turns out that people speaking in languages I don't understand to be quite draining. If I know the language, I can usually tune it out; if not, however, I strain mighty hard to try and figure out wtf's being said. This might explain why I sleep so damn much (other than dysthymia, ha ha.)

All I know is, in last Sunday's Japanese class, the teacher decided to do a listening comprehension test. It was a few paragraph's about someone's day from start to end. Despite having studied hard and developed a pretty good knowledge of vocabulary, exceeding that taught in class, and having a decent knowledge of the grammar, after two sentences of a paragraph, I was sitting there going, "Buh... buh...". I was totally lost. I could pick up the thread again, but then I'd get lost again right away.

The problem is that I can decipher a single sentence, given that it uses vocab I know, but it takes two or three times as long to hear it as it takes someone to say it, so once a second and third go by, I'm lost. Add in an attempt to write down the details I hear, which is a multitasking process I can't even do in English, and I'm bloody screwed. It was very discouraging. I know I'll get better, but right now I suck, hard. Even my classmate, who has not traditionally been a big studier, did several times better than I did.

Point being, I'd lose my mind listening to everyone around me at work, all day, trying to make out what they were saying. My ears bleed a little just listening to one person speak clearly about something that doesn't directly affect my salary.